Friday, March 10, 2006

THE POSTMAN RINGS TWICE: Yesterday, in honor of the world premier of a colorized version of Plan 9 From Outer Space, SFGate mused about what makes a bad movie truly great. Of course, I simply don't agree that The Postman was a bad movie. It succeeded in a very particular (and perhaps as yet unlabeled) genre: as the motion picture insert to a perfect entertaining novel.

I don't know if publishers still do this, but back the heady days of Clash of the Titans and Outland, you could count on an Alan Dean Foster novelization with eight pages of movie stills. Very cool when you couldn't convince your Mom to send you to a rated-R science fiction film about violence and dead prostitutes on a mining colony on Io. (But, Mom, it's about Jupiter!).

Suggest a movie adaptation of a novel that, on its own merits, sucked, but which you appreciated nevertheless for a glimpse of a movie that might-have-been.

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